Review: 'The Handmaid's Tale' Season 2 is still strong, but verges on misery porn

"The Handmaid's Tale" star Elisabeth Moss says she's moved to see activists in handmaids' costumes while protesting proposed bans on abortion procedures, after the success of the Hulu series. (August 8)

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Gilead is not an easy place to pay a return visit.

When The Handmaid's Tale premiered in 2017, it presented a patriarchal and theocratic dystopia that, for some, eerily echoed current trends in politics, making it a touchstone for the left and a symbol of the "resistance." The iconic red and white handmaid costume has been seen at marches, protests and Halloween parties, often used as a symbol of sexism and oppression. The world that it represents is dark and terrible, full of rape, torture and slavery.

Elisabeth Moss as Offred in the second season of 'The Handmaid's Tale.'

Elisabeth Moss as Offred in the second season of 'The Handmaid's Tale.'

Take Five/Hulu

Coming off a historic Emmy win (the first in the outstanding drama category for a streaming series) and a mountain of hype, Handmaid's returns for a second season (April 25, ★★★ out of four) that somehow finds a way to be even darker. And it doesn't always serve the series, which is better focused on humanity's will to endure and survive than its ability to torture and maim.

The writers put the characters through even more harrowing torments. That certainly underlines the point that this dystopia is horrific, and provides shock and gore on par with Game of Thrones. But it gives the drama, still beautifully acted and shot, an exploitative vibe that it mostly avoided last year.

Handmaid's was too capital-I important, and too intellectual, to be pulpy and cheap. But in the first six episodes made available for review, it verges on that territory, from an excruciatingly long sequence of dozens of people being led to a gallows to another (in the same episode) of a woman being handcuffed to a stove with an open flame. Fans often noted that the violence and anguish made the series difficult to watch, and the problem has only increased this time around.

The new season picks up immediately after last year's cliffhanger finale, in which Offred (Elisabeth Moss, with a performance that continues to earn the Emmy she won last year), a few weeks pregnant, was taken by the country's brutal police, unaware whether the van she climbed into meant her salvation or end. The cliffhanger is resolved quickly and brutally, and without spoiling anything, our hero spends much of the new season working to free herself and her unborn child from Gilead's clutches.

Yvonne Strahovski as Serena Joy and Joseph Fiennes as Fred on "The Handmaid's Tale."

Yvonne Strahovski as Serena Joy and Joseph Fiennes as Fred on "The Handmaid's Tale."

George Kraychyk/Hulu

From the opening sequence, the series almost delights in putting its pitiful characters through even more horrors and abuses. We visit the Colonies, areas of extreme toxic waste where the worst offenders are worked to death, and where Emily/Ofglen (Alexis Bledel) was sent after she was arrested in Season 1. We see new and varied punishments for unruly handmaids and other citizens, in graphic detail. The somber tone is reflected in the season's color palette, which makes some scenes appear too muddy to see what's going on.

Alexis Bledel as Emily/Ofglen in "The Handmaid's Tale."

Alexis Bledel as Emily/Ofglen in "The Handmaid's Tale."

George Kraychyk/Hulu

Handmaid's big improvement over the excellent first season is that it more seamlessly toggles between scenes with Offred and the rest of the characters, adding more flashbacks to the time "before" and giving the supporting cast greater depth. Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski) is less of a cartoon villain in those flashbacks, and Emily gets a heartbreaking backstory.

Expanding Handmaid's into a multi-season TV series from a single novel by Margaret Atwood was always going to be tricky, and to maintain the core of the series as it moves beyond the book's roadmap, its characters have to suffer. Still, there's only so much trauma audiences can take before it becomes too much. Handmaid's would do well with a lighter touch.